Sword Masters: The Duel of the Century **Shaw Brothers**. Age of Ravens: Wuxia Homework: Shaw Brothers Films on Amazon Prime 2019-02-12

But truthfully, the hand-to-hand combat artist has it the easiest. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. For example the hero gets attacked in his mountain house. Has some great gameable challenges for characters. It also popularized the genre of films. The two names Cho Tat-wah and Yu So-chow symbolized a perfect couple and his well-known roles include Lung Kim-fei, Leung Foon and Inspector Wah.

Age of Ravens: Wuxia Homework: Shaw Brothers Films on Amazon Prime

He fights swordmasters to get their weapons to complete his collection. Though not a swordplay, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, Chor Yuen's most well-regarded work, is a must see. They offer tales of lone heroes avenging wrongs, dealing with the costs of being wulin famous, or getting caught up in clan conspiracies. Tom Fardy October 25, 2015. They usually feature a huge cast of characters and labyrinthine plotting all thrown at you with such a pace that keeping track of who is who and why this guy hates that guy requires a flow chart and lots of rewinding. October 19, 2015 In regards to the Image releases without English dubs, is it possible that someone else owns the copyright to them? On the whole, the effort to provide the story with a true sense of mystery is admirable. Lu is about to discover that the roots of the evil pulling the strings run frighteningly deep and will have ramifications on all of China unless Lu foils the plot.

The Duel of the Century

Most other films on this list have some coherency. Never as prolific as many of his Hong Kong contemporaries, Yee has nonetheless had a productive and somewhat acclaimed career as a director. But he quickly made a name for himself in the following year by directing the highly acclaimed Intimate Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan, then writing and directing the hugely popular 1973 version of the landmark comedy The House Of 72 Tenants. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. I had another moment of déjà vu when I figured out one of my favorite modern wuxia films, The Duel 2000 , draws from the same novel as this. In 1957, Run Run Shaw moved to Hong Kong, set up a new company, Shaw Brothers Ltd.

Official Shaw Brothers US DVD/Blu

Films like Encounters of the Spooky Kind 1980 , Zu Warriors 1983 , and Mr. This Shaw Brothers adaptation is brilliant! Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Chor Yuen, one of the directors working within the studio system with a more impressive pedigree than most, successfully melds the two to create an action film that invites viewers to guess along with the characters what the source of the corruption might be. I thought it was interesting because, unlike all the other wu xia pian I remember seeing he is the only hero that doesn't use a weapon, like a sword or something more exotic. He is survived by a son in England, and a daughter in the United States, one of his goddaughters is Connie Chan. It lacks weight and none of the performances or scenes are particularly exceptional, though neither are they ever bad. I admit that when I first discovered them, I hated Chor Yuen's swordplay films.

The Duel of the Century (1981)

A couple of great leads, an Agatha Christie-style mystery set up, and a lot of people in Mission Impossible-level disguises. This list is the work of Tom Fardy. He returns home from ten years exile to find everything kind of a mess. The films compress and focus on a single theme, where the series give the story time to grow and breathe. He added directing to his resume in 1957. Lu Xiaofeng Lau Wing flits from place to place, playing the goofball, while piecing together the mystery. After all, that's the genre most people associate with martial films, the chop socky, kung fu flick where someone has to master some empty hand style to fend off or get revenge on a bad guy.

The Duel of the Century

I can totally understand why the tangled scenarios would turn people off. A handful of scenes see Lu pause to think aloud about the most recent events and weigh the collection of accumulated intelligence, sometimes alone, other times with friends who challenge his conclusions. Instead, from the start, the sword master is challenged and wrought with conflict simply because he is a badass. I watched only subbed movies. Shaw Brothers Film Library Directors He was born in 1934 in Guangzhou, the son of veteran actor Zhang Huo-you. The reasons are made clear later.

Duel of the Century, The: Welcome to Far East Flix!

Cheung plays a young director with artistic aspirations who can only find work making a cheap soft-core porn movie. And once again a Chivalrous Knight's honor and fame is his undoing. After helping spark a revitalization of Cantonese language language cinema with his hit ensemble comedy The House of 72 Tenants in 1973, Chor had settled into his own little corner of the Shaw Brothers universe, making a series of lavishly ornate studio-bound wuxias, usually adaptations of novels by popular author Gu Long. It ends in a battle, followed by the inevitable duel between the two heroes. I much prefer The Magic Blade, Sentimental Swordsman, or his more middling, off the wall efforts like The Spirit of the Sword and even the ridiculously confusing Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre. All titles contain both Chinese audio Cantonese or Mandarin, or in some cases both with English subtitles, and English dub, unless otherwise noted.

Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time 3. After your tenth or so film of this sort, you realize there must be some reason for this repeated storytelling pattern, otherwise why repeat it? He went on to kung-fu stardom before coming a highly successful fight director for Jet Li and Jackie Chan. The names Cho Tat-wah and Shih Kien were synonymous to good, Yu So-chow co-starred many of Chos movies. When Lu Xiaofeng goes to ask about the reasons for the duel and Ye Gucheng's attack on another swordsman, the brother-in-law of Shimen Chuishiue, his friend is uncharacteristically silent and evasive about his motivation and then disappears. By the end of the 1960's, Chu Yuan has already helmed over 70 movies in Cantonese, and garnered a wealth of experience as a director. For the fight sequences, Yee adopts the digitally-enhanced techniques of contemporary wuxias, with lots of slow-motion and computerized movements. Extras: The sole extra is the films original theatrical trailer.

List of Shaw Brothers films

When she died in 2000, he returned alone to Hong Kong, in August 2006, he was hospitalised for a month after falling down stairs at his home. Do you have an interesting thought, idea, or story related to Classic Kung Fu, would you like to share your insight of the genre with your fellow Fu fans? Some good bits to steal, especially the jail break out. All of the Shaw Brothers martial arts films have a look to them, super clean and staged. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. The Sword Master is the best version of what Sword of Destiny tried to be, a pulpy wuxia romantic melodrama. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage.

'Duel of the Century' is the detective story version of a martial arts spectacle

Has great and gameable bits to it. Anyway, I love Duel of the Century for the high-speed melodrama and world-building. After defending a young prostitute allowing himself to be stabbed multiple times by a pair of irate customers without flinching , he flees the brothel, knowing his identity will soon be discovered. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers established what was once the largest privately owned studio in the world, over the years the film company produced some 1,000 films, some of them being the most popular and significant Chinese-language films of the period.